I must warn you now, A Natural Disaster is not metal, even less than the mainly acoustic Judgement and A Fine To Exit. I guess that when Danny Cavanagh said that it was the heaviest album they had ever recorded, he was either stoned, or completely hammered. No doubt, A Natural Disaster is an album of dark emotional depressive rock that shows the most progressive side of Anathema. And yet the very purpose to this album was to come back to the times of Eternity and Alternative 4 i.e. to make a music more aggressive, definitely more metal than the latest releases. Well this is just not really the case...

I can't believe these guys, the Cavanagh bros and Co. are talented musicians, there no hint of doubt about that, I mean, Anathema keeps getting better every release, last time we listened them in their new "atmospheric/acoustic" phase with "A Fine Day To Exit", now with "A Natural Disaster" they pushed things further and created another melancholic masterpiece.

If "A Fine Day To Exit" was ultimately a disappointment for me, then this album became a great surprise. While the previous album was more atmospheric, "A Natural Disaster" shows band concentrate more on the beautiful melodies - a strong point of their earlier records (the title track is one of the most beautiful Anathema songs, in my opinion, and Flying is really beautiful too). At the same time, we can hear the return to a heavier sound on "Pulled Under At 2000 Metres A Second". Another highlight of this album is "Closer" - it sounds a bit repetitive, but not in a bad sense, and I really like the usage of vocoder on it.

A very beautiful album, that does have some explosive moments (as on 'Pulled under at 2000 metres a second') but stays very much atmospheric and heavy on keyboards. The female vocals on 'Are you there?' harmonize very well with the male ones and the closer 'violence' is nicely written.